Part III Majorca, Nohant and Paris
George Sand and Frédéric Chopin; they seemed an odd couple and in many ways, they were, with more about them to repel than attract the other. Chopin’s politics were confined to the future and fortunes of Poland, while George was a forward-focused left-winger, more in sympathy with Karl Marx than not. Chopin, showered with approval and affection by the titled and wealthy from childhood, unsurprisingly returned the favor and felt most at home among them. Count Gryzmala had become a fixture in his life and Countess Delphine Potocka and Count and Countess Plater treated Chopin virtually as a member of their own families. Although she had married a baronial heir in Casimir Dudevant, George Sand had little use for wealthy or titled people, and felt bored and shy among them. She much preferred the lively parties thrown by the artists, actors and writers of Paris. Such gatherings tried Chopin’s reserved soul and always gave him headaches. There was very little overlapping of their social circles and as a couple, they had few mutual friends, Count Gryzmala, Liszt and Marie d’Agoult, Pauline Viardot-Garcia and Eugène Delacroix being the most notable exceptions.
Fortunately, their mutual love of music provided the meeting point of minds for Chopin and George. His attitude softened when he noticed how intently she listened when he played. Her appreciation of his music was the shortest, surest path George could have chosen to Chopin’s heart, and they shared a love of Bach and Mozart. Maria Wodzínska, the well-bred, rather vanilla-flavored Polish girl was the straight-laced Chopin’s choice at age 27, but he got the piquant George Sand instead, because he was her choice. George was five years Chopin’s senior and anything but conventional or straight-laced as her life attests. George Sand was a dedicated mother, and an intensely maternal woman with a predilection for younger men. Whomever she loved, she also mothered. Chopin the consumptive young genius far from his home and family must have looked like the perfect target for some nurturing to George. She’d planned to “annexe” Chopin as early as 1836, but did not make her move until 1838 when she was sure Maria was out of the picture. If Chopin had truly been in love with her, George did not want to either interfere or be blamed for having done so.
Majorca
By the summer of 1838, Chopin and George were a couple with a consummated relationship. He charmed George and made her laugh as he did everyone. He played his newest compositions for her, including his Military Polonaise which became the unofficial anthem of Poland.
Military Polonaise in A Major Op. 40 no. 1
Performed by Philippe Entremont.
A century later, Radio Warsaw was defiantly playing the Polonaise even as Nazi tanks rolled into the city in September 1939.
For her part, George introduced Chopin to the more sensual and sexual aspects of love, and looked after his physical well-being. Chopin called her Aurora, or Aurore, evidently unable to call a woman George. She followed Gryzmala's example in calling Chopin by his boyhood name, Frycek. She also broke off her association with Félicien Mallefille and told him he must leave Nohant. Having just written a flattering profile of Chopin for a Paris paper, Mallefille was so incensed when he realized Chopin had supplanted him that only the intercession of Count Gryzmala prevented him from challenging Chopin to a duel.
After their joyous, tender first summer together, the strength of George and Chopin’s commitment was tested almost at once by their trip to Majorca in the winter of 1838-1839. Chopin had been urged by physicians and friends to find a warmer place to spend the winter than Paris. So, in October, they set off for Majorca via Barcelona with George’s children and a great abundance of romantic high spirits and a critical shortage of practical planning or knowledge of their destination. To their chagrin, they discovered upon arrival that Majorca, unlike Italy, was not then a tourist destination, especially not for Parisians used to comfort and convenience. There was almost no housing available to rent, let alone the beautiful villa they’d blithely assumed they’d find. By Mid-November, George finally managed to rent a little house called S’On Vent, and the party moved in. While the warm weather lasted, it was pleasant if crude living, but winter came even to Majorca, and that was when their troubles began.
Chopin and George were surprised by a rainstorm while out on a walk one December day and came back soaked and chilled, whereupon Chopin succumbed to his worst bronchial infection since 1835. Everything about the badly weatherproofed S’on Vent was damp, cold and miserable. Desperate to keep Chopin warm, George heated his room with a fire in an open brazier; the smoke made Chopin cough so hard he began to spit blood. Local Majorcan medicine was as crude as the living conditions, and then the doctors gossiped that the young gentleman staying at S’On Vent was coughing blood. Their angry, alarmed landlord evicted them immediately, Majorcans having a particular horror of consumption. It was a blessing in disguise, as the resourceful George managed to find alternative lodgings in a half-ruined monastery above the village of Valledemosa. The monastery was more weather-proof if not much warmer than S’On Vent; a good thing as the heavy rains continued through January.
Instead of her productive lover’s idyll George spent the winter nursing Chopin, and even cooked for him, since his digestion could not cope with the greasy, pork-based local diet. Even if he’d been well, Chopin could not have composed much, the piano Pleyel had shipped to Majorca having been impounded by customs agents. George could not then redeem it since they demanded 700 francs in duty—more than the piano was even worth. When the weather finally improved in February, Chopin, George, Maurice, Solange and a shipment of pigs departed Majorca on a steamship to Marseilles. They were all so thankful to leave Majorca, that not even Chopin complained about the terrible smells from the cargo hold. Once back in France where he could sleep in a dry room and a warm bed with proper food, Chopin soon rallied. It is a testament to the strength of his love for George that their affair survived the Majorcan misadventure. Still, the wet, miserable winter on Majorca very likely shaved a few years off the time Chopin had left.
Nohant
George would have done better to take Chopin directly to Nohant that first winter as he loved her house and her land almost as soon as they arrived there in the late spring of 1839. He found the flat countryside pleasantly reminiscent of Poland, and the house itself welcoming. For the next eight years, George and Chopin established the pattern of spending their winters in Paris so that Chopin could return to his teaching and giving a few performances for the necessary income it supplied, and both of them could have the stimulation of Parisian life. Each May, they returned to Nohant for the summer, so that Chopin could rest in the country quiet and concentrate on his composing and George could attend to estate matters. They entertained guests often at Nohant, including George’s half-brother Hippolyte, Delacroix, Gryzmala, and the singer Pauline Viardot-Garcia and her husband Louis. Chopin was particularly fond of Delacroix and Pauline; his friendship with Delacroix outlived his relationship with George while Pauline would sing for Chopin in exchange for the piano lessons he gave her. Even his sister Ludvika and her husband and daughter visited Nohant in 1843. Chopin could not bring himself to confess to his parents that he was living unmarried with the most notorious woman in France, as Mikolaj and Justyna still nursed some disappointment over Maria Wodzínska. He was more frank and forthcoming to Ludvika. She and George, united by their love for Chopin, got along very well.
When it came to composing, it scarcely mattered where Chopin was, he composed constantly, if not easily, with melodies always chasing through his head. Meticulous and perfectionistic, he spent months revising his music before sending anything to his publisher. Nevertheless, his summers at Nohant were among the best and most productive years of his life as a composer. He was left very much to his own resources during the day, since George would write late into the night, sleep until noon, then spend afternoons tutoring her children, or seeing to estate business. The whole household dined together at about five p.m. then spent the evenings together. George would read aloud and Chopin would play the piano. George loyally nursed him through his ever more frequent and severe cycles of illness. They lived together as a couple, but their relationship had become platonic. George knew just how ill Chopin was, and feared that any sexual activity could mean the end of him. Her love for him transcended sexuality, since her more sensual affairs had rarely lasted more than a year or two, while she lived with Chopin for nine. Chopin had inspired George’s devotion, and could almost always make her laugh which made up for her seeing him at his least lovable whenever he was ill. His sense of humor came out in his music, as well.
The
Waltz in D. flat Major op 64 no. 1 "Minute Waltz"
Performed by Dinu Lipatti.
Although it's now known as the "Minute Waltz" the original title of this work is the Valse au Petit Chien. One afternoon at Nohant, George and Chopin were laughing while watching their little dog wildly circling as it tried to catch its own tail, sending Chopin straight to his piano to try to capture the sight musically.
Endings
In the spring of 1842, Chopin’s old friend Ján Matuszýnski died of consumption. Chopin and George attended him on his deathbed, although it must have horrified Chopin to watch a friend die of his own disease. After Matuszynski’s death, Chopin found his Chausée d’Antin flat intolerable. Being on the fifth floor, it was also increasingly impractical, as climbing so many stairs exhausted him. George’s rooms in the nearby Rue Pigalle were too cramped for four, and he could not teach there without disturbing her at her writing. After some difficulty, George and Chopin found new lodgings in the Square d’Orleans, nearly next door, but separate from each other, maintaining their daily routines from Nohant. She could write, and he could teach and compose without fear of disturbing her. During their evenings together, they entertained a broad--and unique—cross section of Parisian society; the Rothschilds or the Radziwills might dine there one night, followed by known associates of Karl Marx the next, and covering most of the points between the two extremes the remainder of the time.
Under the contented surface, there was plenty of tension at Nohant in the form of personal clashes and over chronic shortages of money. Although both Chopin and George were both well-paid, they were both extravagant and were neither of them very good at managing their incomes wisely. George in particular was increasingly debt-ridden. In May, 1844, news of Mikolaj’s death in Warsaw at age 73 plunged Chopin into deep mourning, contributing to his increasing terror of death. He became an even more difficult patient. George always loved him, but she was under the strain of any care-giver of a seriously ill partner and was only human in feeling this wasn’t the life she’d wanted or planned for. She vented some of her frustrations with Chopin in her 1846 novel, Lucrezia Floriani. Lucrezia’s lover, the aristocratic Prince Karol, was a thinly disguised Chopin, embodying all his least appealing personal traits of sullen jealousy, moodiness, selfishness, and cruelty, driving poor Lucrezia to premature death. The first installments in Paris caused wide-spread rumors of a rift between Madame Sand and Chopin. The couple’s mutual friends were aghast, especially Delacroix.
Of George's two children, Chopin had always got on best with Solange, giving her affectionate attention and piano lessons. Originally, he'd only meant to please George through kindness to her daughter. Now in her late teens, Solange, always a skillful manipulator had become a beauty. She was also full of anger against her mother and Maurice, feeling that Maurice had always unfairly monopolized their mother’s love and attention. She wanted to punish them both, but ended up injuring Chopin the most by separating him from George. Now in her early forties, George was starting to fear that, even if unconsciously, Chopin had transferred his romantic feelings from her to Solange. Solange guessed this and carefully reinforced the suspicion.
It was partially George’s own fault, as Chopin himself felt as if she had demoted him from adult lover to a sort of spoiled third child, while Solange always treated him as an adult. When Chopin returned to Paris for the winter in November 1846, he departed without George for the first time, not realizing that he would never return to Nohant. The following May, Solange made a hasty marriage with the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Clésinger— choosing an even worse husband for herself than George had in Casimir Dudevant. Clésinger was a womanizer and a brute already deep in debt and plagued by scandalous rumors. If George and Chopin were inept with money, Clésinger and Solange were disastrous, running up an 8,000 franc debt in 2 years. Shortly after their marriage the Clésingers visited Nohant and picked a fight with George over money. George angrily ordered the couple out of her home, refusing to allow them to borrow even her carriage to return to Paris. Solange then appealed to Chopin, who agreed to lend them his carriage, not knowing any reason then why he should not. Taking Solange’s part against her in a family quarrel was one thing for which George could not forgive Chopin. She wrote him a cruel, angry letter in the summer of 1847 which blindsided him, and made their separation complete—a thing neither of them had truly wanted.
Solange was not finished with Chopin or with poisoning him against her mother. He, deeply hurt and furious after George’s last letter, chose to believe Solange when she told him George had tired of him and the endless nursing and had rejected him because she wanted a new lover. Even now, Solange implied George was living with Chopin’s non-existent rival in debauchery at Nohant. Unfortunately for George, Lucrezia Floriani gave Solange's lies credibility they did not deserve. Gryzmala and Delacroix both sided with Chopin although they would have done Chopin a greater service to discredit Solange and work for a reconciliation with George, instead.
Chopin gave his last Paris concert at the Salle Pleyel in February 1848. Invited by one of his piano students, a wealthy Scotswoman named Jane Stirling, he made a poorly advised trip to England for the second half of 1848. The trip exhausted him. Just the effort of communicating in English which was his weakest language, gave Chopin headaches; he found England too cold and the food disagreed with him. He returned to Paris early in 1849, and for a time, continued to teach as he desperately needed money to meet his increasing doctor’s bills. Unlike better times, when he'd stride about during lessons, or sit beside his pupils patiently demonstrating technique, often going past the hour when students made good progress, Chopin was now forced to teach while lying on his parlor sofa, instructing in a faint voice. Lessons rarely lasted the full hour, as he could not talk for long without coughing. By summer he was forced to give up teaching altogether, being too weak to concentrate properly. Desperately lonely, he could only see those who came to visit him. Although still angry and bitter, Chopin could not resist asking his visitors for news of George, not knowing she was doing the same thing. They might have reconciled yet if not for Solange. Since he never wrote to her, George was sadly convinced Chopin no longer loved her. If he had asked for her, she would not have hesitated to come.
So long as he could still play and compose, Chopin could always lift himself out of even his darkest depressions. By the summer of 1849, he had finally grown too sick to leave his bed long enough to do either one. Ludvika was sent for in September 1849, and she remained in Paris to care for her brother during his final weeks. She soon received a letter from George asking her for news of Chopin. Ludvika did not answer it; all her loyalty lay with Chopin.
Chopin received such a steady stream of visitors near the end it's a miracle he got any rest. Such was Chopin’s popularity still that if a quarter of the people who claimed to have been there had been there, his death bed would have had an audience as large as his rare concerts at the Salle Pleyel. Chopin received last rites from his priest friend, Father Jelowicki, and died two hours after midnight on October 17, 1849 with Ludvika, Solange, Countess Delphine Potocka, Gryzmala, Jane Stirling, and Father Jelowicki in attendance.
After death his heart was removed from his body at his own request, Chopin having a terrified fantasy of being buried alive. Chopin’s grand and well-attended funeral was financed by Jane Stirling, Chopin having died nearly penniless. It took place on October 30; Pauline Viardot-Garcia was one of the soloists in the Mozart Requiem, performed at Chopin’s request. Both Gryzmala and Delacroix served as pallbearers. Also performed was the funeral march from Chopin's own second piano sonata. His body was interred at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Ludvika took his heart back to Warsaw with her, concealing the funerary urn under her skirts from the Russian guards at the Polish border. She interred it at the parish church near their old family home. Chopin’s heart at least, had returned to Poland.
Here is the Funeral March from the Piano Sonata no. 2 Op. 35 performed by Valentina Igoshina:
Bibliography:
Cate, Curtis. George Sand: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1975
Szulc, Tad. Chopin in Paris: The Life and Times of the Romantic Composer. A Lisa Drew Book/Scribner. New York, NY, 1998
Weinstock, Herbert. Chopin: The Man and His Music. Alfred A. Knopf. New York, NY, 1949
Recordings:
Ashkenazy, Vladimir. Chopin Etudes Op.10 and Op. 25. Decca Record Company, London, 1975 & 1984
Chopin Mazurkas Decca Record Company, London, 1985
Kissin, Evgeny. Frédéric Chopin: The Four Ballades Berceuse op 57, Bacarolle, op 60 Scherzo no. 4 op 54. BMG Classics,
Lipatti, Dinu. Chopin: The Complete Recordings EMI Classics. Remastered in 2005
Find Part I Here:
http://open.salon.com/blog/shiral/2010/03/01/chopin_warsaw_to_paris
And Part II here:
http://open.salon.com/blog/shiral/2010/03/08/chopin_warsaw_to_paris_ii
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
Ramonas Voices
Fay Paxton
Starshine Roshell
mistercomedy
DuchessinBrooklyn
The Chocolate Covered Kitchen
Salon.com
Comments
I was delighted to learn "Minute Waltz" was inspired by a dog chasing its tail! Of course it was! It is perfect.
R
"His attitude softened when he noticed how intently she listened when he played." What better way to win an artist's heart?
http://open.salon.com/blog/shiral/2010/03/08/chopin_warsaw_to_paris_ii
Thanks for reading and commenting, Robin! Chopin is very close to my heart.
Hi Natalie and hi Pilgrim; yes a lot of time, and it was a labor of love all the way. I've always loved Chopin's music, but only had a general idea of what he was like, personally. I learned so much and grew so fond of them researching this, that I will miss Frycek and George horribly. I hardly know what to write about, now. Their breakup was indeed tragic; I found myself wishing I could really HURT Solange, she did so much harm.
Hoop Junior, thanks for coming by! The more I think of it, the more I feel Chopin was to the piano what Paganini was to the violin. If all of Liszt's compositions were to disappear, I'd definitely be sorry, but I could cope. If all the sheet music and all the recordings of Chopin's music were to disappear, I'd absolutely die. The piano repertoire would be so much poorer without him--he is truly irreplacable.
Owl, thanks for coming by, reading and commenting!
Whatever happened to ol' Solange?
Bitch.
Wonderful post and comprehensive look at the life of a music great!
Sorry I am late. Been laid up a bit and was without cable internet service for a while as well.
Monte
Just Cathy, thanks for coming by and reading! I played a few of Chopin's preludes and waltzes in my college years; I'm terribly out of practice now and have no room for a piano. But writing this reminded me of so many things and made me wish I COULD play his music well enough so that it would sound like something. =o)
Monte, hello and thanks for coming by! I'm feeling mellower, this week. =o) Thank you for reading the whole series so loyally. I'm glad you all enjoyed it so much.
Maybe it's time to start researching Franz Liszt....